Governor and slaves | A WOMAN'S LOT | bondage stories

"Now our belies are full, and are glasses too, let me tell you something more of our ways here," the Governor said, "and the organisation we have built up to keep the Barbarian at bay."

Brother and sister had accepted the Governor's invitation with gratitude.

They were eager to make an entry into Pityusian society, and how better than as a friend of the Governor himself. On his part, he was always anxious to hear news from abroad, and liked the company of the young, especially if they were female and of noble birth, with beauty in keeping. The dinner had been sumptuous, the dishes many and various, the wines to match. Now he was making good his promise to describe some of the local customs for their benefit.

"I've already referred to the principal plank in the platform of the state. All who live under its protection must play their part in defending it.

All able bodied men are permanently at the state's service, and must train in arms, and keep them by them, ready for any emergency. Since this is a war that may never end, there must be sometimes when they can attend to other business than military, and thus it is that they are actually only with the Eagles for six months out of every twelve, though they never leave the reserves, and may be called up at a moment's notice."

"And the women?" Claudia asked. "They serve also?"

"Indeed my dear, they do," the Governor assured her. "All women must serve the state, doing tasks that will spare men for fighting and military training.

Every woman, within two years of the start of the monthly flows that confirm her

entry into womanhood, must begin to serve the State for six months in every twenty-four."

"And of what does that service consist?" Marcellus enquired. "We saw women unloading ships and puling wagons, and many other forms of hard labour on our way from the docks. Are they State employees?"

"I think State slaves might be more appropriate," the Governor replied.

"While they are in service, they are kept chained and naked, and treated in every way as slaves. As you observed they may be used for any labour that will release men. They hew stone in the quarries, mend roads to keep open the lines to the forts, cut and transport timber for bridges and revetements, haul barges, work the mills. All must serve, none is exempt from the highest to the lowest.

Actually my own wife Lavinia should by rights be out with a work party at this time but, in fact, she is doing a spell in the mills."

"As State service?" Marcellus asked, intrigued that such an exalted person could be put to such degrading and punishing labour.

"Actually she is serving a penal term, which will not count towards her service. That is only postponed, and she will have to do it, once she has returned though, naturally, I shall grant her a little grace before she has to go on a chain gang again."

Marcellus looked embarrassed at the news, but, woman-like, Claudia was not so shy of asking after the man's wife.

"What did she do?" Claudia asked, Marcellus having failed to do so for fear of hearing something the Governor might like to keep quiet about - perhaps the same fault that had led to the unfortunate Lady Livia's mass rape that morning.

"I should explain," said the Governor, "that, with the men in barracks for long periods, without access to their wives and mistresses, it is necessary in the interests of morale and satisfaction to supply them with women in the field.

We might of course call for volunteers, but past experience shows that that can lead to many marital and domestic difficulties, and it has been found that the best way is to draw women from the common pool by lot, and send them out for short periods, so that the possibility of permanent attachments forming is reduced. The women are held in common by the unit, replaced frequently."

"All women?" Claudia asked, wide-eyed.

The Governor smiled at her alarm.

"You may relax, Lady Claudia," he reassured her., "Virgins are never sent, in fact the women must be married for three years before they become eligible for the ballot."

Claudia visibly did relax, and their mentor continued with his tale.

"As you will no doubt have surmised by now, Lavinia was picked from the last ballot, but came back from the field with a bad report. I'm afraid," he confided, "that Lavinia is one of those misguided women who think that the sole purpose of intercourse is to pleasure the woman. It is an unfortunate fact of life that such affronts to nature seem to crop up in every generation, refusing to recognise that true harmony between the sexes comes when both are satisfied together. It is a particularly foolish stance to take when confronted with a dozen woman-starved virile men in a mountain fort, whose needs she has been sent to satisfy. Their Centurion, quite rightly, sent a note back with her in which he declared his men had been cheated, and I could only agree with him."

"So you sent her to work in the mills as a punishment then?" Marcellus enquired.

"For four weeks continuous twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, and figged as well, to remind her of why she is there."

"Figged?" Claudia queried.

"A plug of peeled horse radish in her fundament, and another in her vagina, with a cord strung up bowstring tight between her thighs to keep them in place," the Governor explained, grimly, "That's in addition to the hook in her bottom. It's hard and sweaty work, climbing a treadmill for hours at a stretch, and the sap of the radish burns at every step. I'm sure she will find it very educational."

Claudia shuddered delicately. She didn't understand about the hook, but didn't think she'd like it if she did, and moved to change the subject.

"I noticed that the women on the gangs all had cropped heads," she said.

"Is that for hygiene?"

"Only partly. The real purpose is to provide material for bow strings, and the cables of ballistae. Women's hair is long and elastic compared to wool, with its short staple, or horse hair, which is coarser and less extendible. You may also have noticed that the women in the streets nearly all show fine heads of long hair. They are encouraged to do so, it would be an offence to cut it short and thereby deprive the state of an essential munition of war."

"You shear them like sheep, kept for wool," Claudia replied with some spirit. "That's like making domestic animals of us."

"And not the only harvest we gather," the Governor informed her, quite unabashed by her ill-concealed indignation. "Nursing mothers must wean their babes at nine months, but they are kept in milk long after the child ceases to suck. Woman's milk is the finest sustenance for men wounded in battle, and with the constant skirmishes with the Atlans, the Huns and the Goths, we always have men recovering in the infirmary. Women with milk are sent to them to give them suck and restore their strength as soon as possible. It's a sovereign remedy and, besides, the men get great comfort from it."

"Naturally, I've never had milk in my own breasts," Claudia remarked, "but I've observed that, if it is not taken away regularly, first the woman is in pain, then the milk itself dries up. Can you always match the needs of soldiers to yield of women?"

"A good point, my Lady," the Governor acknowledged, "and one that we have taken seriously. Where there is only a temporary mismatch, soldiers who have already recovered or, failing that, any man that fancies a suck on a warm breast, take off the women's milk, and keep them flowing and comfortable. With an even greater over-supply, the milk is drawn off by manipulating the swollen dugs. Stroking, squeezing and expressing the milk. not unlike the handling of goats, so I understand. It is, I am told by women who should know, a somewhat painful process, but the milk recovered can be made into an excellent cheese - a welcome supplement to the men's rations, especially on long and hazardous missions, since it is highly concentrated and nutritious." He smiled broadly.

"The flavour is original and appetising as well."

"Ugh!" Claudia exclaimed, "to have to give your breasts to soldiers, or be milked to make cheese! At least they must have escaped service while they were carrying the child, even if they had to be milked like cattle afterwards."

"Oh, no, they have to serve, even if pregnant," the Governor corrected her. "Of course a prudent overseer will spare a woman the lash, once her belly has dropped and she's near her time. He can get the effort he wants by giving her neighbours a little extra with the whip, without risking a brood mare or her offspring. The women don't usually take advantage of their status, having a sense of duty and loyalty to their sisters, who have to take their lashes for them."

"And when the baby comes?"

"Then they're given a few days to recover, after which they sling their babies on their backs, and rejoin the gang. There's many a good soldier sucked on his mother's teats along the tow path, and not just the lower ranks either.

With even the highest women in the land having to give six months labour to the state in every two years, many a woman of rank has gone on the gang with a full belly, and left it with a future General chewing on her dugs. Their husbands often find it convenient to send them while they're carrying, so that they are absent from their beds for as short a time as possible. Meanwhile they can use the services of a convenient slave, or call on their mistresses to spend more time with them."

"So the women are shorn, chained, and milked if they have full breasts.

Are they given on other preparation then, before they are set to work in the quarries or on the roads?"

"They are sealed to prevent the ingress of rogue male members," the Governor told them. "While they are in the State's care, they are protected as closely as the Vestal Virgins in Rome, and returned to their men in the same condition they were delivered in."

"Sealed!" exclaimed Claudia, wide-eyed. "How is that achieved?"

"Firstly, the mouths of their vaginas are touched with a hot iron."

Claudia's gasp of horror sounded sharply in the room.

"A hot iron?" she said faintly.

"Just a touch, no more," the Governor reassured her, "the iron is only applied for a few seconds, four or five at the most. Just enough to sear the edges of the vagina, so that, when it heals there is a seal that must be broken before a penis may enter."

Claudia looked aghast. To cover her confusion, Marcellus remarked that it sounded just like a natural maidenhead, and virgins, presumably, would not be treated so.

"Oh no, they all taste the iron," the Governor told him cheerfully,

"whether they be virgin or not, then the two edges are sewn together with silver wire. The ends of the wire are joined with the State's seal, formed in lead, and woe betide any man who tries to break in. It will be his balls that are broken if he is caught. Moreover, when the brands heal, the woman has a wonderful new virginity, so you might say the women are returned as good as new, if not better!" He laughed at his own small jest.

"There is just one other small matter," he added, "those women who do not already wear a nose ring have their septums pierced and a copper ring inserted.

It enables them to be controlled and tethered more easily."

"A nose ring?" Claudia squeaked, even more shaken than by the thought of red hot metal searing her vulva. "Surely women of quality are not expected to submit to that indignity?"

Indeed they are," their host assured her. "All women of all degrees have to wear nose rings when on state service, and many retain their rings afterwards, from pride in their service, and the proof of their hardihood. High class women have gold rings as a matter of course. Virtually any but the poorest of the women provide their own ring, in gold if they can afford it, if not silver, rather than appear with tarnished copper on their upper lip. Even the poorest family will scrape together enough money to send their women to service with at least a silver ring, so as to spare them the disgrace and discomfort of brass or copper, which tarnishes where it passes through the septum, and can arouse allergic reactions. There are even charities, set up by legacies from rich women's dowries, to provide poor girls with good rings, in memory of the testator's own service, probably many years before."

"And they all spend six months naked, and labouring with stone or at the mill, in all weathers?" Claudia asked, still fascinated as well as appalled by the prospect.

"Oh yes. Our climate, away from the mountains, is never too severe and, even away from the coast, the work they do keeps them warm enough."

"But surely, the women's health must suffer, worked so hard," Marcellus objected. "Their bodies are soft and need to be treated with care."

"You have much to learn young man," the Governor declared. "Women are far tougher than you think, and well adapted by nature to carrying burdens. If they are soft and slack, it's because they've been let get so. Treat a woman with a mixture of care and firmness, like you would your horse, and she is happy, healthy and useful. Pamper her and she is miserable, soft and a burden. Look around you, when you tour our city" - he threw out his arm in a comprehensive gesture - "and ask yourself if you can see any crippled or disfigured women. We do not hide them, I promise you, they just hardly exist. There are no fat women among us! If one were to be discovered she would be interrogated rigorously, on suspicion of having evaded state service."

There was pride in his eyes as he declaimed all this.

"Our old women stand tall and straight. The benefits of their Spartan careers serve them well after they have passed the age of child bearing. You see few bent old crones here!"

"Your account makes sense, Excellency, but they are worked like slaves, and many of the slaves in other parts are crippled by their work."

"Perhaps their owners had access to unlimited supplies of slaves to renew their gangs, or were simply not so enlightened. I do not speak of morality or delicate sensibilities, you understand, but hard sense. Make a woman carry her own weight, and be sure she'll strain something inside a month and be almost useless to you. Make it one third of her weight, and make her carry it twice as many times a day, and by the second month your store will have grown far beyond what could be achieved by overloading her. Self interest is the best incentive to the contractors, so long as they are educated to understand where that interest truly lies. Besides," the Governor added with a grin, "those women all

belong to someone, somewhere and, if they're rendered useless or unpleasing in his bed, or unsaleable as brides, the men will come seeking retribution from someone's hide. That is the women's best protection yet."

"Do the men care for their women so carefully then?" Claudia queried. "It seemed to me that that poor woman was not given much consideration, when she was whipped and raped this morning."

"Ah. Livia," the Governor sighed, "a lovely woman, and a dear friend of Lavinia and myself, but a handful to her husband and family. First, you must understand, all women must be owned here. It was so in the days of the Republic, before the decadence of the Empire, but Rome has forgotten that, more is the pity. All women here are subject to a man, who may direct their lives as he pleases, and punish them in any way he sees fit although, unlike the ancient Republic, he may not kill them, they are too valuable. They are owned by their Fathers, their Husbands, their brothers," looking pointedly from sister to brother and back again, "or their sons, whoever is nearest to them. If none of these are available, or the sons are below the age of twelve, then the State will appoint a suitable male guardian."

"Mothers subject to their sons? Surely a woman cannot bare herself to receive the rod from a boy of twelve?"

Again Claudia's astonishment caused her to question the matter.

"It is unusual, I know," his Excellency agreed, "but not unknown. There was just such a case a few years back, and the boy was most severe with her. I can't say she didn't deserve it, and she was a better woman for her flogging after."

"In such a strict society, I can see that the penalty for adultery would be severe," Marcellus said. "Very few wives will stray around here I would think."

"It depends what you consider to be straying," the Governor replied.

"Though men have absolute power and most are prepared to use it, they can for that very reason afford to be indulgent with their women. The urge to try something new between the sheets is not confined to men, and to bottle it up can lead to tensions that are unhealthy both for the boy and the long term marital relationship. Most men will allow their spouses a very light rein indeed.

Actually his fellow men would condemn him as mean spirited if a man were to be too constrictive of his wife."

"Then why did Livia suffer so?" Claudia persisted.

The Governor eased himself on his cushions and reached for more wine.

"I fear Livia was notorious, and with the lowest of the low. As you have had ample opportunity to see for yourselves, she is a handsome and delightful woman, full of spirit, but cursed with a deplorable taste in men, and a reckless disregard for the sensibilities of others, such as her husband and family. She delighted in seeking out the coarsest seamen, the roughest common soldiers, parading them in public. Scipio, her husband, warned her many times, but she only laughed. She had her final warning only a couple of months back, when he personally took a rod to her buttocks, but she defied him by going out immediately, and presenting her striped arse to the first man that would have her. As it happens, a muscular mule driver from Persia who had just come in with a caravan from the desert, and was as full of semen as a goats tit with milk.

She paraded him through the town, hanging on his arm, kissing him lasciviously, and hiking up her robe to leap upon his rampant and ready prick in half the taverns in town."

He too another sip of his wine.

"There was nothing for it but to take extreme measures, and try and cure her once and for all. Of course, my court found her guilty at once, there was no other verdict they could have brought in and, as is customary, she was remitted to her family for sentence, the result of which you have witnessed. It is to be hoped that, when she returns from the dockside whorehouse to which she has been sent, she will have seen the error of her ways and behave, if not with virtue, at least with discretion. It's not much to ask of a woman after all."

Claudia sighed.

"I'm afraid it's too much to ask of some," she said, with a charmingly rueful expression. "Some of us are just not cut out for it."

"Ignore her," her brother recommended, "Claudia likes to pretend to be a woman of the world, but actually she's still a virgin. My father used to have

her examined every second moon by a midwife, and, since she's now to be my charge, I intend that the practice shall be renewed."

Claudia blushed and looked away, and the Governor covered her confusion by continuing his discourse on affairs in the isolated colony. It was late when the two young Romans sank into the grateful comfort of their couches, their heads spinning with thoughts of what they had heard. Marcellus was full of military matters, and what his own part in them was to be, for he had every intention of offering his services to the State that had granted them refuge. Claudia saw only lines of naked, chained women toiling under a hot sun, and one of them herself.

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